Does heaven exist? If so, what is it like? And how does one get in? Throughout history, painters, poets, philosophers, pastors, and many ordinary people have pondered these questions. Perhaps no other topic captures the popular imagination quite like heaven. Gary Scott Smith examines how Americans from the Puritans to the present have imagined heaven. He argues that whether Americans have perceived heaven as reality or fantasy, as God's home or a human invention, as a source of inspiration and comfort or an opiate that distracts from earthly life, or as a place of worship or a perpetual playground has varied largely according to the spirit of the age. In the colonial era, conceptions of heaven focused primarily on the glory of God. For the Victorians, heaven was a warm, comfortable home where people would live forever with their family and friends. Today, heaven is often less distinctively Christian and more of a celestial entertainment center or a paradise where everyone can reach his full potential. Drawing on an astounding array of sources, including works of art, music, sociology, psychology, folklore, liturgy, sermons, poetry, fiction, jokes, and devotional books, Smith paints a sweeping, provocative portrait of what Americans-from Jonathan Edwards to Mitch Albom-have thought about heaven.

In the fall of 1886, Boston philanthropist Mary Tileston Hemenway sponsored an archaeological expedition to the American Southwest. Directed by anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, the Hemenway Expedition sought to trace the ancestors of the Zu–is with an eye toward establishing a museum for the study of American Indians. In the third year of fieldwork, Hemenway's overseeing board fired Cushing based on doubts concerning his physical health and mental stability, and much of the expedition's work went unpublished. Today, however, it is recognized as a critical base for research into all of southwestern prehistory. Drawing on materials housed in half a dozen institutions and now brought together for the first time, this projected seven-volume work presents a cultural history of the Hemenway Expedition and early anthropology in the American Southwest, told in the voices of its participants and interpreted by contemporary scholars. Taken as a whole, the series comprises a thorough study and presentation of the cultural, historical, literary, and archaeological significance of the expedition, with each volume posing distinct themes and problems through a set of original writings such as letters, reports, and diaries. Accompanying essays guide readers to a coherent understanding of the history of the expedition and discuss the cultural and scientific significance of these data in modern debates. This first volume, The Southwest in the American Imagination, presents the writings of Sylvester Baxter, a journalist who became Cushing's friend and publicist in the early 1880s and who traveled to the Southwest and wrote accounts of the expedition. Included are Baxter's early writings about Cushing and the Southwest, from 1881 to 1883, which reported enthusiastically on the anthropologist's work and lifestyle at Zu–i before the expedition. Also included are published accounts of the Hemenway Expedition and its scientific promise, from 1888 to 1889, drawing on Baxter's central role in expedition affairs as secretary-treasurer of the advisory board. Series co-editor Curtis Hinsley provides an introductory essay that reviews Baxter's relationship with Cushing and his career as a journalist and civic activist in Boston, and a closing essay that inquires further into the lasting implications of the "invention of the Southwest," arguing that this aesthetic was central to the emergence and development of southwestern archaeology. Seen a century later, the Hemenway Expedition provides unusual insights into such themes as the formation of a Southwestern identity, the roots of museum anthropology, gender relations and social reform in the late nineteenth century, and the grounding of American nationhood in prehistoric cultures. It also conveys an intellectual struggle, ongoing today, to understand cultures that are different from the dominant culture and to come to grips with questions concerning America's meaning and destiny.

Enveloped in mystery, Amish culture has remained a captivating topic within mainstream American culture. In this volume, David Weaver-Zercher explores how Americans throughout the 20th century reacted to and interpreted the Amish. Through an examination of a variety of visual and textual sources, Weaver-Zercher explores how diverse groups - ranging from Mennonites to Hollywood producers - represented and understood the Amish.

The Zuni society existed for centuries before there was a United States, and it still exists in its New Mexico desert pueblo. In 1879, three anthropologists--Matilda Stevenson, Frank Hamilton Cushing, and Stewart Culin--came to study Zuni and, fearing it might be destroyed, to salvage what they could of its tangible culture. Though their methods are now disparaged and ignored, their work vividly imprinted Zuni on the American imagination. The complex relationship between the Zuni as they were and are, and as they were imagined by these three remarkable, eccentric pioneers, is at the heart of Eliza McFeely's important book. Stevenson, Cushing, and Culin found professional and psychological satisfaction in submerging themselves in an alien world and in displaying Zuni artifacts in America's new museums and exhibit halls. McFeely puts their intellectual and personal adventures into perspective; she enlightens us about America, about the Zuni, and about how we understand each other.

The definitive portrait of one of the most important cultural figures in American history: Walt Disney. Walt Disney was a true visionary whose desire for escape, iron determination and obsessive perfectionism transformed animation from a novelty to an art form, first with Mickey Mouse and then with his feature films–most notably Snow White, Fantasia, and Bambi. In his superb biography, Neal Gabler shows us how, over the course of two decades, Disney revolutionized the entertainment industry. In a way that was unprecedented and later widely imitated, he built a synergistic empire that combined film, television, theme parks, music, book publishing, and merchandise. Walt Disney is a revelation of both the work and the man–of both the remarkable accomplishment and the hidden life. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography USA Today Biography of the Year

A catalog of an exhibition held at the Whitney Museum in 1995 includes a literary collection

People dreamed of cosmic exploration—winged spaceships and lunar voyages; space stations and robot astronauts—long before it actually happened. Space and the American Imagination traces the emergence of space travel in the popular mind, its expression in science fiction, and its influence on national space programs. Space exploration dramatically illustrates the power of imagination. Howard E. McCurdy shows how that power inspired people to attempt what they once deemed impossible. In a mere half-century since the launch of the first Earth-orbiting satellite in 1957, humans achieved much of what they had once only read about in the fiction of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and the nonfiction of Willy Ley. Reaching these goals, however, required broad-based support, and McCurdy examines how advocates employed familiar metaphors to excite interest (promising, for example, that space exploration would recreate the American frontier experience) and prepare the public for daring missions into space. When unexpected realities and harsh obstacles threatened their progress, the space community intensified efforts to make their wildest dreams come true. This lively and important work remains relevant given contemporary questions about future plans at NASA. Fully revised and updated since its original publication in 1997, Space and the American Imagination includes a reworked introduction and conclusion and new chapters on robotics and space commerce.

Folklorist, writer, editor, regionalist, cultural activist—Benjamin Albert Botkin (1901–1975) was an American intellectual who made a mark on the twentieth century, even though most people may be unaware of it. This book, the first to reevaluate the legacy of Botkin in the history of American culture, celebrates his centenary through a collection of writings that assess his influence on scholarship and the American scene. Through his work with the Federal Writers' Project during the New Deal, the Writers' Unit of the Library of Congress Project, and the Archive of American Folksong, Botkin did more to collect and disseminate the nation's folk-cultural heritage than any other individual in the twentieth century. This volume focuses on Botkin's eclectic but interrelated concerns, work, and vision and offers a detailed sense of his life, milieu, influences, and long-term contributions. Just as Botkin boldly cut across the boundaries between high and low, popular and folk, this book brings together reflections that range from the historical to the philosophical to the disarmingly personal. One group of articles looks at his career and includes the first extended analysis of Botkin's poetry; another probes the fruitful relationships Botkin had with leading musicologists, composers, poets, and intellectuals of his day. This is also the first book to bring together a collection of Botkin's best-known writings, giving readers an opportunity to appreciate his wide-ranging mind and clear, often memorable prose. For Botkin, the blurring of art and science, literature and folklore was not just a philosophy but a way of life. This book reflects that life and invites fans and those new to Botkin to appraise his lasting contributions.

Providing a detailed historical overview of animated film and television in the United States over more than a century, this book examines animation within the U.S. film and television industry as well as in the broader sociocultural context. From the early 1900s onwards, animated cartoons have always had a wide, enthusiastic audience. Not only did viewers delight in seeing drawn images come to life, tell fantastic stories, and depict impossible gags, but animation artists also relished working in a visual art form largely free from the constraints of the real world. This book takes a fresh look at the big picture of U.S. animation, both on and behind the screen. It reveals a range of fascinating animated cartoons and the colorful personalities, technological innovations, cultural influences and political agendas, and shifting audience expectations that shaped not only what appeared on screen but also how audiences reacted to thousands of productions. Animation and the American Imagination: A Brief History presents a concise, unified picture that brings together divergent strands of the story so readers can make sense of the flow of animation history in the United States. The book emphasizes the overall shape of animation history by identifying how key developments emerged from what came before and from the culture at large. It covers the major persons and studios of the various eras; identifies important social factors, including the Great Depression, World War II, the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, and the struggles for civil rights and women's rights; addresses the critical role of technological and aesthetic changes; and discusses major works of animation and the responses to them.

Does heaven exist? If so, what is it like? And how does one get in? Throughout history, painters, poets, philosophers, pastors, and many ordinary people have pondered these questions. Perhaps no other topic captures the popular imagination quite like heaven. Gary Scott Smith examines how Americans from the Puritans to the present have imagined heaven. He argues that whether Americans have perceived heaven as reality or fantasy, as God's home or a human invention, as a source of inspiration and comfort or an opiate that distracts from earthly life, or as a place of worship or a perpetual playground has varied largely according to the spirit of the age. In the colonial era, conceptions of heaven focused primarily on the glory of God. For the Victorians, heaven was a warm, comfortable home where people would live forever with their family and friends. Today, heaven is often less distinctively Christian and more of a celestial entertainment center or a paradise where everyone can reach his full potential. Drawing on an astounding array of sources, including works of art, music, sociology, psychology, folklore, liturgy, sermons, poetry, fiction, jokes, and devotional books, Smith paints a sweeping, provocative portrait of what Americans-from Jonathan Edwards to Mitch Albom-have thought about heaven.